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And, you can check out a transcript of the show, here:

Alex: What’s up everybody, welcome to The Stack, I’m Alex, the responsible one.

Justin: You don’t need to say those words ever again. Just say Alex. Justin, the other responsible one.

Pete: And I’m Pete the irresponsible one.

Justin: Reckless Pete, they call him.

Alex: Pete get your thumb out of that pie. Pete, come on. Pete, what are you doing?

Justin: Yeah. Get your thumb out, and put you body inside the chair-

Pete: What?

Justin: And start talking comics.

Pete: [crosstalk 00:00:36].

Alex: I don’t know what we are talking about. We are talking about comics that have come out today, Wednesday in comic book shops. We are going to review a bunch of them. Couple of notes here right at the top, as usual. We’ll stop doing these notes at the top, eventually.

Justin: Yeah. Let’s stop with the notes at the top.

Alex: Stop? No. I got to give you guys a couple of notes. You guys in the listening audience. All right. First of all, perk up. Second of all pull up your pants.

Justin: Wow.

Pete: Don’t you dare talk about our audience like that.

Alex: Third of all get a job, you guys.

Pete: What the fuck man?

Alex: You’re sitting down listening to a podcast all day. What do you do with your lives?

Pete: Hey, some people are out on a run right now listening to our podcast.

Alex: Well, that’s true.

Justin: Out on the run.

Pete: Out on a run.

Justin: The cops are out on a run.

Pete: Not the run.

Alex: Yeah. If you’re on the run from the cops listening to our podcast-

Justin: Way to be living your own life.

Pete: Alex, that’s a confident criminal. It’s like, “I want to listen to this comic book podcast and not plan my full escape.”

Alex: So a couple of things that we should let you guys know. There is a transcript version of the podcast that rolls out either simultaneously with the podcast or soon after if you prefer to read your podcasts or if you are hearing impaired in any way. Also we should mention that there is a separate Stack podcast for this that you can just subscribe to. It rolls out in the regular comic book club live feed with our live show. But if you want to subscribe separately, if you want to rate it separately, you certainly can there.

Alex: We’re going to get through a couple of your user comments at the end of the show. If you guys do you want to leave us a comment in iTunes, on either feed, we’ll read it here on the show and respond to you guys right there. We love to hear from you guys.

Justin: We do.

Pete: We do.

Alex: We love it.

Justin: In person, especially when we’re at our homes or on a vacation, if you can find us.

Pete: Why do you inviting people to do right now?

Justin: I want people to come visit us. Pete, you’re going on a trip next weekend. I think people should come find you.

Alex: Yeah. Where are you going Pete? Let them know where they can find you.

Pete: I’m going to be in Philly.

Justin: All right. That’s it. The target’s in Philly. See if he could track him down.

Alex: Follow the trail of broken cookies and you’ll find Pete.

Justin: Yes. Everyone knows about Pete’s cookie addiction now.

Alex: Yes.

Justin: He’s a cookie crook.

Alex: Well something is killing Pete. But also from BOOM! Studios, something is killing the children. Number one came out today. This is a big advanced hit. A lot of people are predicting this might be the next big comic book, the next big breakout comic book.

Justin: Wow.

Alex: It’s by James Tynion IV who wrote some of our favorite series here on the show. But this is an original horror concept. Curious to hear what you guys think about it. Do you think it’s worth the hype? Do you think it’s beyond the hype? What’s your take?

Justin: Well, I think it’s-

Alex: Only comments on the hype. Not the actual look at it.

Justin: Yeah. Never, that’s it. We don’t review comics anymore. We review hype. Hype is good. Good last page review on the hype.

Pete: I think it’s a very solid book. I didn’t know about any of this hype stuff, but I mean-

Justin: One of our guests talked about it on literally the last live show.

Pete: Cool.

Justin: And he said it was really hyped.

Pete: Well, I’m happy for the [crosstalk 00:03:27]. He’s a great writer, but I just read it as a really solid book. They’re just making the statement that monsters are real, which is bold. It’s a bold statement.

Justin: That’s most of comics, I believe.

Pete: Yeah. You also know it’s not a documentary, right?

Alex: What?

Pete: The book.

Alex: It’s not.

Pete: No.

Alex: It’s not all true.

Pete: Some of it’s true. There are people, those do exist.

Alex: All right.

Justin: Yeah. Cities, children. I like this a lot. I don’t know about leading up to the hype. It’s hard to figure that out after the first issue. This is really just the very beginning. You’re just assembling the characters in this town.

Pete: Well, some issues you can tell like Murder Falcon, first issue, you know it was going to be maybe one of the best comics of all time.

Justin: Sure. But I do love all the ingredients that are here. It’s horrifying. The characters are super interesting and different. And the blonde girl that we see on the flip phone she’s very interesting.

Alex: I would say that if anything is probably the thing that backs up the hype because the art in this book is fabulous across the board. The character designs are great. The eventual monster reveals are great as well, but it really is this main character who… To get into spoilers here, there’s a kid at a sleepover. He’s telling a story about a scary monster he saw, then we flip forward and something, for the title has been killing all the children in the town. We don’t know what. We eventually find out what that is through this woman that it’s pretty easy to figure out. She is a traveling Monster Hunter. All of the buffy the vampire slayer other characters like that.

Pete: How did you know that about her? Because of-

Alex: She stumbles out of the woods with two blades, sees a girl in a wagon with no arms, who’s like, “Did you take care of it?” She’s like, “Sure. Okay, I’ll go to this next town. I’m on my way.”

Alex: So all of that, I think was like pretty clear setup, right?

Justin: Yeah. 100%.

Pete: I thought it was a chip on the side of her head that made you think that.

Alex: No. That’s another mystery that we have to unfold as we go further into the series.

Justin: I’m intrigued by the idea that she’s talking to someone else or a larger organization. That to me, feels like sort of a non horror story element being introduced here, which I thought was a nice little teaser or twist.

Alex: It feels like a cross between buffy and Attack on Titan to me at this point that we’re very early going.

Justin: Yeah.

Pete: It’s also-

Justin: But the point that I want to make is, I think the design of that main character in particular, is the thing that’s going to make this book go long term. And I know that’s a weird thing to focus on, but it is something like that that it feels like a fresh new character. It feels like a fresh new look. It’s very iconic instantly and I think that’s cool to see.

Pete: But it’s also kind of sad because that girl definitely doesn’t have a childhood. She’s working a full time job killing monsters.

Alex: Yeah. Something is killing the children but something killed your childhood.

Justin: Oh, wow. That’s the real-

Pete: Jobs, don’t get them guys.

Justin: Jobs, the real horror.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: The real monster here is a job.

Alex: Is your argument that if you take a job, you don’t have a childhood? When did you start working?

Pete: I started working very early.

Justin: First job?

Pete: First job was paper role.

Justin: Wow.

Pete: Oh, yeah.

Justin: What a male paper girl.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: What about you?

Alex: My first job?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Working at the computer lab at the library.

Justin: Wow. Is there anything possibly that could be more on brand that you saying that? Where you were changing vacuum tubes back in the first fucking computer?

Alex: Yeah. We didn’t actually, even have a library. It was just a computer the size of a library.

Justin: Wow. That’s great.

Alex: You were able to take out one page of a book.

Pete: Your first job working at a bar?

Justin: Burger King drivethru, baby.

Pete: Oh, yeah, that’s right. We talked about this.

Justin: I ran that whole shit is the original podcast as I was saying. I did the first podcast.

Pete: [crosstalk 00:07:15] saying that’s not true.

Justin: What’s up everybody welcome to the Stack of burgers and vegetables which you’re just about to order.

Pete: [crosstalk 00:07:22].

Justin: I was hitting that [crosstalk 00:07:28] as a child. That’s why often don’t make any sense.

Alex: This book is very good. Definitely, recommend picking it up. Regardless of the hype or not, don’t expect the second coming of God for this book necessarily, but I do think it’s very exciting. The art as we said is gorgeous. And I’m really looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Alex: All right, next one to talk about from beginnings to endings, image, comic books, Wicked + Divine. Number 45 is the last issue of the series. This is bringing everything that Kieron Gillen and J. McKelvie have put together over the past couple of years. Mild spoiler here, but after Laura was thrown in jail for life, the last issue, she does in fact get out. We jumped ahead about I believe, 55 years, something like that.

Justin: Yeah. It’s 2055, I believe.

Alex: Oh, it’s 2055. Right. And we find out what’s happened to our characters and find out kind of how they all end. How did you feel about this last issue?

Justin: This was interesting. I mean, I’ve read this entire series. And I was surprised that it wasn’t Laura’s giving her eulogy. I thought Laura was going to be the character that died over the course of the last issue. And then it made sense for the very final moment, which I really liked. But it would really this felt more like sort of an epilogue than almost any other last issue of a comic I’ve ever read. It truly is just the characters getting back together. Being like, “You cool? You cool?” “I’m pretty cool. Bye.”

Alex: Well, we talked about that with the last issue, right?

Justin: Yes. 100%.

Alex: The way that issue 44 ended was a definitive ending to the series. The whole conflict of the series has been that they have two years to live, they become gods, and then they die. That was what they thought. They found out the truth was very different than they thought it was. They fought against it. And ultimately, the last lot of the last issue was, like I said, Laura being sentenced to life as she smiles, because she’s gotten to live. She’s gotten to live out of the rest of her life as a human being, as the rest of them have.

Alex: So we speculated this last issue would be just that final moment and that’s exactly what it was. Pete, how did you feel about it?

Pete: I thought it was good. I really liked what they did with the funeral and kind of the way they really conveyed that somber tone and really kind of like the comic felt sad, waited powerful. And you kind of felt that in the funeral, which I think is really impressive to do in a comic format. Yeah, I mean, I think it was a very creative, very interesting book and it ended in a nice way.

Alex: Cool. All right.

Justin: I like the musical flourishes in here as well. She’s always been something in Kieron Gillen’s work and it was nice. I thought there’d be one other big move in this, last issue. It definitely felt like just pretty chill.

Alex: Yeah. I think though he didn’t want to… they didn’t want to set it up as like this question mark of, “But will the cycle continue? Who knows?”

Justin: I totally get that, because I think the point was, no, it’s not.

Alex: Right. That’s done is done.

Justin: That’s why the story was special.

Alex: Yeah. There you go. All right. The next thing to talk about a long awaited issue from DC Comics. It’s been a while since this one last came out Doomsday Clock, number 11 from Geoff Johns and Gary Frank.

Alex: This is the second to last issue of the series. So it’s all starting to come together here. What did you guys think about this? Pete, how did you feel about this?

Pete: I thought this was a great issue. And to me, when you get these two worlds coming together the way this kind of issue built to something-

Alex: A big roll for both the Watchmen and the DC Universe, right?

Pete: Right. Yeah. I really loved the kind of last panel. I thought that was cool because those two characters coming together that’s-

Alex: Superman and Dr. Manhattan.

Pete: Yeah. I didn’t want to spoil it, but since you’re going to be a dick all right.

Alex: Now, we knew that was going to happen.

Justin: Literally, they’ve talked about that the entire time. It’s these two guys-

Pete: Yeah. Well, we finally get it, and it’s great. And I can’t wait for the next issue because, that to me, is those two people coming face to face and kind of dealing with the world and that kind of stuff. I think it’s very exciting.

Justin: My analogy is, it’s like when the final fireworks go off, if like say the 4th of July, when you shoot fireworks, and it’s like this stuff, the finale and it’s going and going, you’re like, “Well, when is this going to stop?” And you stop paying attention because you’re like, “Wait, what’s happening? Is it over? Oh, it’s not over yet. Oh, now it’s over. No, it’s not. There’s more.” And then it’s just like when we can’t pick anything out anymore.

Justin: And that’s what this feels like. And especially, we’re doing a-

Pete: That’s a weird, stressful way to look at fireworks.

Justin: Little bit like… When you’re watching fireworks, they’re sort of like, should we applaud now? And this feels like that thing of the start and stop. The fact that the issues have taken so long to come out, I think weighs into that a little bit. Especially, since we’re rereading Watchmen for our Watchmen watch podcast, which we’re doing.

Pete: Nice plug, bro.

Justin: Nice plug.

Pete: Subtle.

Justin: That comic is so perfect. And this feels like you’re painting an extra smile on the Mona Lisa.

Pete: Oh, that’s fucking.

Justin: On the forehead.

Alex: I can agree with you about the fireworks thing, in particular.

Pete: I disagree.

Alex: Because this comics so far, one of the things we talked about every issue is, it’s very much taking it’s time. It’s very much… It hasn’t been clear what the point is, what the plot is exactly, what’s happening here. And we’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting. And then it all got stuffed into this issue. And that is why it felt quick to me.

Alex: To your point, this might read very differently as a series when you read it in trade, potentially. But right now, with one issue to go, I’m still not quite sure what the idea is. I’m not quite sure what the move is. Is this doing something to the DC Universe? Is that saying something about the world? Is this moving the Legion of Super-Heroes forward? Is it fixing time in the DC Universe? Is it doing all of those things? We don’t know. We don’t have any idea.

Justin: Yeah. And it feels like it could have been something much shorter. And sort of getting to this final moment of this issue and into the next issue or something that was much longer that really explored different arcs featuring these characters and the different patches of the Watchmen Universe would touch the DC Universe. I guess we’ve done that with the other Watchmen before Watchmen series, but focusing on that, and then just inserting the other DC characters would be cool.

Alex: Yeah. I mean to this point, I think the essential idea which Geoff Johns talked about beforehand is he doesn’t want to see Dr. Manhattan and Superman wreck the world together and I get into big fight. I’m curious to see them have some sort of a conversation. It’s not going to happen. I’m curious to see them have some sort of conversation. I was curious to see them talk. But there’s been too much build up for it at this point. Right.

Justin: Right. Yeah. What are they going to say?

Pete: I also like how Dr. Manhattan seems nervous about it.

Justin: Yeah. He’s a nervous dude.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, it’s just going to be interesting.

Justin: He and Dr. Manhattan. That’s how he sounds.

Pete: It’s just going to be interesting to see what Superman’s going to be… what Superman is-

Justin: [crosstalk 00:14:50] a movie of Manhattan?

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: That’s by Dr. Manhattan. Cool.

Pete: It will be interesting to see what Superman’s going to say. He’s going to… First thing he’s going to say is like, “Yo, cover your junk. What’s up?”

Justin: You need to borrow my tiny red underwear?

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: Maybe it’s going to just be like a fun-

Pete: Maybe, “Oh shit. Could you imagine if it turns out the reason that Superman is wearing his underwear outside of his pants this entire time is so he can give them to Dr. Manhattan.”

Alex: To cover his blue [crosstalk 00:15:16].

Justin: Wow, that’d be a fun to reveal.

Pete: That would be-

Justin: I’ll tell you what makes a lot of sense.

Pete: Yeah. Because then they both be just staying there with blue legs.

Justin: You heard it here first. The final issue of Doomsday Clock, spoiled. A couple of blue legged dudes hang out.

Alex: Because he comes back to life and he’s like, “Look at these bunch of blue legs.” Looks directly at the camera, winks.

Alex: Listen, it is not too old to admit that we started doing this podcast during the Vaudeville, all right? It’s that it’s just not. It’s not. I’m not old.

Pete: I would like to go on record to say, I disagree with you guys only in your-

Alex: About slight whistles or what in particular?

Pete: About fireworks.

Alex: Okay.

Pete: How you watch fireworks and want it to end so quickly once again.

Justin: I’m saying I want it to end, it just-

Pete: Oh, God, when’s this going to end? Is this the ending? Is this the ending?

Justin: No. It’s more the finale is like, there’s too much going on.

Pete: You can always tell when the end of the firework show is up.

Justin: [crosstalk 00:16:24].

Pete: I feel like the end of the firework show, the thing that’s annoying to me is there like, “Oh here’s a firework. Here’s a firework. Oh, here’s two fireworks. Oh, this one looks like a heart. This is a star.” And they get to the end like, “Shit. Let the ball go.” And it’s just like, “[inaudible 00:16:40].”

Justin: That’s what I’m saying.

Pete: No. That’s great. We mean too much.

Alex: Calm down.

Pete: What?

Alex: There’s no art to it.

Pete: That’s all [inaudible 00:16:46].

Justin: I like the… One minute ago-

Pete: You’re all going off and it’s beautiful and amazing.

Justin: One minute ago, you were like, “I’m not old.” And you were like, “Fireworks are too wizzy baby for me.” It’s just too much going on.

Alex: Too wizzy baby.

Pete: Slow it down. I’d rather just see a leaf fall from a tree. It is the season.

Alex: I go to these firework shows and I cannot follow the plot for the life of [inaudible 00:17:11].

Justin: The original fireworks was a flag, the good all the United States flag.

Alex: What happened to that, Pete?

Justin: Yeah, Pete.

Pete: I’ll tell you what, someone’s going to review this on iTunes and is just going to say you guys are too old to one star.

Justin: Or five stars.

Alex: Oh no, who said it?

Pete: Yeah. Five stars. I also have old five stars.

Alex: All right. Let’s move on to something that will not be quite as contentious House of X, number four from Marvel Comics.

Justin: Oh my God.

Alex: Now, Pete and I had… You were not here for this.

Justin: That’s true.

Alex: Pete and I had quite a sit down last week. We talked about House of X. We talked about Powers X or whatever. I still don’t want to call it that. And I think we came to an understanding, right?

Pete: Sure.

Alex: That you understand now why you’re frustrated about it. You understand why we’re liking it. You don’t have to like it and nobody expects you to like it. But we’re all going to talk very calmly about it.

Justin: Yeah, nice.

Pete: That’s all going out the window with this issue.

Justin: Plus, I grounded up a bunch of pills in Pete’s subway [inaudible 00:18:10] prior to that. So let’s hope that it’s taking effect.

Pete: Yeah. My subway was actually crunchy there.

Justin: That’s right. That’s for pills.

Alex: So one thing I you got to like about this book, Pete, I know how much you like it when things pick up immediately after the last issue. And this is the first issue of House of X, Powers of X. That picked up immediately after the last issue-

Justin: How about that?

Alex: With the X-Men team leading an assault on the Mother Mold. The Mother Mold is going to give birth to a bunch of Master Molds, that is going to lead directly to the creation of Nimrod and the destruction of the entire world. They’re trying to stop that before it happens. And when we last left them, they all esploded.

Pete: Esploded?

Alex: Esplode.

Pete: That’s the Spanish for explode?

Alex: Nah. It’s kind of like internet for explode.

Justin: No. That’s the language, the crack oh language.

Alex: Yeah. I speak it because my best friend decipher.

Justin: Yeah. You guys used to have fun together.

Alex: So that’s where we pick up. And this issue, again, if you could get past your feelings, Pete, while I was reading this I kept thinking, “This is a great issue repeat because this is nonstop action, the entire time.”

Justin: Great action.

Alex: And barely interrupted by word pages, but mostly left for the end.

Justin: It’s all picture page.

Alex: I thought, once again-

Pete: It started with some word pages.

Alex: Awesome issue.

Justin: Such a good issue. Come on, Pete, Cyclops says that Wolverine is the bravest man he’s ever known. It’s calling you a brave man.

Pete: Do you know what’s great? Is the fact that Cyclops one of the, “Great leaders of the X-Men,” if you can hear my quotation marks.

Justin: I can’t hear.

Pete: He’s such a great leader. He just watches as Wolverine dies. What a great leader that is. Thanks for [crosstalk 00:19:45].

Alex: Over the history of our podcast, Pete, have been very upset about how Wolverine died. Wait was it Wolverine? No, is the Punisher died. Nevermind, my point is not good.

Justin: He doesn’t like it when Wolverine dies either.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: So your point stands.

Alex: Sure. Okay.

Justin: Cyclops is not leading this mission, [inaudible 00:20:02] was.

Alex: Okay. Wait, wait. Now, I figured it out. What’s worse, Pete, the Punisher being killed by Darkin or Wolverine being killed by the sun. Because I think Wolverine getting killed by the sun is pretty cool.

Justin: Cool way to go out.

Alex: That’s pretty cool.

Justin: I plan on going out that way.

Alex: If I was going to kill Wolverine is-

Justin: No, just skin cancer. But still-

Pete: It got to be twice.

Justin: Yeah. Exactly. Still sun got me just like Wolverine.

Alex: By the way, I want to say very cool, very odd thing to say, Justin.

Justin: I had a melanoma when I was 19, so it’s very fresh to have light skin cancer.

Pete: Oh, light skin.

Justin: Did I bring down the room?

Alex: Just a little bit.

Pete: Just a little light skin cancer.

Justin: I’m fine.

Pete: You got skin cancer. Take it easy, it’s light.

Justin: This is a little kiss. This issue is so good.

Pete: Okay. Well, before you guys starts sucking this freaking Comic off with all the love, can we talk about-

Justin: Too late, Pete.

Pete: All right, first off-

Alex: We’re already light.

Pete: We have a comic-

Alex: Up to halfway the internal cheeks.

Pete: Were a bunch of people died, but we don’t know why. We don’t know what they were fighting for.

Alex: Wait. What?

Pete: We don’t know what time period This was taking place.

Alex: No. We know all of this stuff.

Justin: Yeah. This is present day. This is House of X, which is taking place in quote unquote present day. We know why the Master Mold is going to make all these Nimrod. Basically, we’re getting to Nimrod here.

Pete: Nimrod, some guy in a helmet, looks like a lollipop who goes by professor told them, “Hey, listen [crosstalk 00:21:33].”

Alex: Are you doing a bed right now?

Justin: Show me the diploma.

Pete: What? What diploma? Oh.

Justin: Because he’s a professor.

Alex: Yeah. Okay. Listen, I know maybe you’re probably doing a bit right now. But let’s move past the bed and instead talk about the comic book. Like we discussed on the last show when we were like, let’s be serious about this a little bit.

Justin: My God, she’s bringing an anger management coach for you too.

Pete: Yeah. I’m working on it.

Justin: This book is so good. I love the way that we start with-

Pete: No, no. Explained to me… Sure. Okay.

Justin: I’m doing it right now. We get the first page, granted it’s words, but it really sets the tone of these X-Men have been through hell constantly.

Pete: We know that.

Justin: I know. But it was great to read this information be like… To see it all sort of calculated on paper, I thought was really cool. And really set a dark tone right at the top of this.

Alex: So I will mention, for those of you who didn’t read the issue, it opens with laying out the various ways that the mutant race has been down over and over again. It talks about Genoshan what the cost was there. It talks about the decimation that was caused by Wanda’s no more mutants and what they did there, as well as the smaller decimations, they’ve gotten through over and over until there are, what is it? 198 mutants, something like that.

Justin: Yeah. That decimation was an event from years ago, and just seeing it here was like, “Oh, God, right. That is horrible.”

Alex: And I got to tell you, I mean, one of the things that’s been talked about a lot with this run that Jonathan Hickman has been doing on the X-Men is how a lot of minority groups can read themselves of things. I will say as a Jew reading this, this was a very hard page to read. I mean, the very clear thing that they did with Genoshan is they killed 16 million mutants, which is exactly the number of Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. So that’s what they’re calling back there. But reading that it, it hits you in the gut very hard when you’re reading that sort of thing.

Alex: And to your point on the comic book super-hero, it sets the stakes of what they’re doing very well, because they are down to 198 mutants at this point. And if they lose this, they lose everything.

Justin: It’s an existential crisis for them which we’re used to the X-Men facing, but the fact that we start seeing the members die right out the gate, Archangel and Husk are dead and I was like, “I like Husk.” And we didn’t even see… She dies off panel.

Justin: And the one thing that Jonathan Hickman does here that I thought was really cool is we get to see the enemy side as if their protagonists, which is very rare. I feel like in both the X-Men comics, comics in general, where the villain is true, you’re with them and they’re fighting for their lives as well, that I thought really made it even harder to read from an emotional stuff.

Alex: Yeah. It’s a really tough issue, particularly, because also from a comic reader perspective. So we talked about this but most of them died, this issue. Cyclops dies. Wolverine dies. Husk and Archangel dies. I don’t remember who else.

Pete: Jean.

Alex: What?

Pete: Jean Gray.

Justin: Jean dies at the end. I mean, Monet’s sort of winning with her fight. Also Monet, what a great character. So cool to see her.

Alex: Oh, okay.This is an alternate universe, not really happening or something like that, but you still have that emotional heft of what’s been going on and the ultimate question of, “Wait, if these characters are dying here, and this is not,” quote unquote, God, if you could hear my quote speed, “Our universe then what you universe is this?”

Alex: So what I loved about this issue, like a lot of this issues in the run is, it had the emotional heft. It has the puzzle of everything that is going on, but it also wraps in these characters in this big action in this issue at the same time. And just to wrap it back to what I was saying about the Jewish stuff, I mean, no more. So at the end, Wanda back in the decimation said, “No more mutants,” right?

Alex: At the end, Professor Xavier, I think, or lollipop head or whatever you want to call him, seems to be saying, “No more,” repeating that as part of the no more mutants. He’s taking back that phrase. He’s appropriating it for the mutants. And then seeing it shatter apart and seeing him and say, “No more, no more, no more,” when they’ve lost almost everything reminded me a lot of the phrase that comes out of the Holocaust, which is, “Never again.”

Alex: And as Jews, again, you say over and over again. Never again. Never again. Never again. Not because it will never happen again. But because you know it may and you need to remember that it never should happen again.

Alex: So, I again, I’m sure other minority groups probably read a lot of different things in this issue, in this run. But to me, I was able to read that Jewish experience very heavily in this issue.

Justin: Yeah. Couple other moments that I just thought were really great, the conversation that Nightcrawler and Wolverine had, right before he knows he sacrificing himself. Just able to wrap in all of the information we know about these characters that Nightcrawler is deeply religious, and Wolverine’s like, “Hey, is there an afterlife?” He knows he’s sacrificing himself. He’s still hard as nails, but he still has the human core.

Justin: This is just a five panel series, and we just get so much out of it. Jonathan Hickman has digested every character in the X-Men universe, has boiled them down to their most important qualities and just lays it out here.

Pete: But we still don’t know what’s going on.

Justin: We will, though. You have to just-

Pete: That’s what’s hard for me is people are dying and I don’t if it’s for a good reason or not, and that is bothersome.

Justin: It is.

Alex: The reason is that the entire mutant race will be destroyed if they don’t win. That’s the reason.

Pete: Well, I don’t know. I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s, this place that keep going to-

Alex: Krakoa?

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: I think the no more means we’re going to get another timeline for Moira, and that’s going to be the timeline that we follow forward. This is all setting the stage. So it’s not meant to be a true like, everyone knows what’s going on narrative. It’s sort of giving you all these details that the actual run on the title, which starts in October is going to be playing out. This is sort of like the overture.

Alex: I mean, yeah, I think that’s what we talked about on the last podcast a little bit with this issue. I can’t remember. Maybe it was the one where you weren’t here, but I’m not sure. Personally, I was getting pretty sure with the last issue and even more sure with this issue that, to your point, we’ve learned about, what, 10 lifetimes from Moira. And this is sensibly the one where she’s like, “I tried something different. I brought everybody together to stop this thing.” I think she’s still going to fail.

Justin: Yeah. I mean, it seems like they failed pretty hard right here.

Alex: They failed pretty hard here. And then I think we’re going to find out that, to your point, it’s going to reset. They’re going to go back and Moira’s going to be like, “I failed. Every single way, I failed. There’s no way of stopping this thing.” And that’s what we follow is now we know the stakes, now we know the cost of what’s going to happen and what the X-Men are coming up against.

Pete: But they didn’t go. They got that last one off. So the head is…

Justin: I don’t know. It came online. So it makes me feel like they failed, to Alex’s point. It did fall into the sun. But I think we have two more issues of this series to go before the full launch. So I think we’re going to get the play out of that. We’re going to see other bad things happen. And we’ve never really seen an X-Men team deal with a loss this bad, all the core, not all of them, but most of the core mutants that we followed for the last 70 years or whatever, 60 years. We’re seeing the devastate… We will see the devastation of what happens after that. Just exciting.

Alex: And the other thing that we’ve been talking about all along is that each of these issues deals with a different part of X-Men history. And here we are dealing with those decimation things. We’re dealing with Genoshan, which we touched on a little bit before, and that’s very cool.

Alex: To your point, Justin, Hickman has done his research. He’s clearly dealt himself in the entirety of X-Men history. It does make me wonder if Ed Piskor’s X-Men grand design was in a weird way an overcharged to this.

Justin: Oh, that’s cool.

Alex: That it was setting the stage, that it was synthesizing everything, doing the research together. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I don’t think so.

Justin: Plus, Pete, maybe there’ll be a solar flare next issue and Wolverine will just pop out of and be like, “I beat the sun too, bitch.”

Alex: What do you think? Would you like that?

Pete: No. I just think it’s just tough when people die, you’re not sure-

Alex: No. Wolverine is definitely dead forever, but the rest of them I’m not sure about. What do you think about that, Pete?

Alex: No. That was off screen. There’s just a spray of blood. What probably happened was, the person shot him. You saw his visor come off. So shot him his visor is like, “Phew.” And the bullet bounced off and back into the bad lady and Cyclops is like, “Now I can see, and I’m a cool dude. I’m the coolest dude because Wolverine died in the sun.”

Justin: Yeah. No more competition for [crosstalk 00:30:45].

Pete: It was a real competition between Wolverine and Cyclops for who was the coolest.

Alex: I might be getting this wrong, but I think one of the titles that they’re launching in October is Cyclops the cool dude.

Justin: Wolverine sucks, issue number one is going to be a real big seller. Go home Canadian man, is going to be one.

Pete: That’s very offensive.

Justin: No. It’s about Wolverine.

Alex: All right. Let’s move on to something else from Image Comics, Pretty Deadly: The rat, number one. This is bringing back Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios series in a new time era. We get to see them in sort of, I think, it’s 1920s. Is it ’20s Hollywood?

Justin: Yes. There’s some old Hollywood stuff.

Alex: Whatever it is, it’s old timey Hollywood. We get to investigate a new supernatural mystery type thing here.

Pete: It’s Probably Vaudeville times, right in your wheelhouse.

Alex: All right, buddy. Listen, I had a nice time in vaudeville. And then the time was over. And I retired the Florida.

Justin: You invented pie in the face, right? [crosstalk 00:31:57] pie. Most people ate pies before. He was like, “No.”

Alex: I was trying to eat a pie but I didn’t know how to do it. I mean, that’s funny.

Justin: That’s funny.

Alex: This series is gorgeous, first of all. I know Kelly Sue is a fantastic writer but Emma Rios’s art is so stupendous in every single issue this. I love it. What did you guys think about this issue?

Justin: So poetic both in the writing and the art. The combination which is just such a nice. I love the story within a story of the conjurer man as he’s known in here, finding his niece’s artwork, and we get to actually see it sort of in the full page. Very cool. Very well done. Series is great.

Pete: Yeah. I’m super excited for more.

Alex: Cool. I will say there’s a story told in this issue. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, it’s like tales of beatle the bar, the tale of the three brothers, but feels like it’s own shadow play riff on it and it’s really, really cool.

Justin: This reminds me of like early Hellboy. If you’re looking for a comparison, if you’re not sure if you want to pick this up, it has the same sort of horror vibe, about really just well made fun. There’s a couple humor moments sort of like Hellboy used to have. Good stuff.

Alex: It’s very good. Let’s move on to ComiXology. ComiXology is kicking off their new originals with Break Lands, number one is the first issue out of that. They’re going to be releasing a new comic every week for their ComiXology of limited members is, I believe, what it is. This one is by Justin Jordan, who’s been writing… Well, he’s done a bunch of books. But he’s writing River. Is that the book from Image right now?

Justin: Oh, yes. We’ve checked that out.

Alex: Yeah. So this is entirely separate. It’s about a fantasy land, some violent stuff happens. Pete, how did you feel about this one?

Pete: Oh, I loved it. Art’s really cool. I love the setup of having these huge figures kind of like coming at people. It’s very intense, very scary, but the art, it has a sweetness to it. And really, the main characters there are very interesting, unique and I like the way they all interact. I think it’s a great issue. I’m excited for more and I feel like they did a good job of leaving you hanging and wanting more.

Justin: He’ll have a spine torn out. And that’s what we got here, right?

Pete: Yeah. I mean, there’s nothing like it.

Justin: This reminded me a lot of a show I loved, Avatar: The Last Airbender. It feels like sort of spiritually in the same area and that’s fun.

Alex: Yeah, I really enjoyed this as well. He tends to put his influences right in the back matter and kind of just throws together like, “Yeah. There’s a bunch of things that I want to throw together and see what happens. Will that be fun?” And one of the big things he talks about is he always felt like they were kind of change in terms how they used the force in the Star Wars.

Alex: So he wanted to up that up a bunch, and that’s, definitely, what plays out here mixed with Avatar and Princess Mononoke.

Alex: Oh my God. I thought this was… We were talking about this a little on the Patreon on Slack. People were like, “Oh, it’s probably a lost house of Alpha Flight type thing.” Nope. No, it was totally, “This is where they are now. We’re going to move them forward.”

Alex: And honestly every story I weirdly came to it like, “All right, prove it.” And felt like they’re not going to delve into the emotional journeys of these characters. Just give me a little bit of a lark, but no. They dug in there. Each of the stories is very dark, which is one of the things-

Pete: Yeah. It was weird because they were doing it with light things, like Puck’s been buried, but he is sharing his soul.

Justin: At the beach in fun way, not dead and buried in a grave.

Alex: Yeah. One of the things that I always really liked about Alpha Flight is people forget about it. They look at it as like, “It’s the Avengers, but Canadian. So they’re probably nice or something, the end.” It was always really dark and fucked up. Like all of the stuff with Department H, there’s all these terrible things going on there at the same time. That’s something they work in here.

Alex: Like you said, there’s a great story with Puck and Aurora. That gets it to their characters. The first one with Snowbird and who’s the other character with Snowbird?

Justin: Shaman.

Pete: Shaman.

Alex: Oh, yeah. It’s Shaman. Also it ties it to a bit of Snowbird’s history that I haven’t thought about in decades, probably. I love this.

Justin: I love the way… Yeah, I loved it too, as I said. The way they paint Canada as this really mystical place where a bunch of crazy shit happens, I love that.

Alex: Well, and another thing that I thought was great, that was clearly so purposeful from the Puck story is every single Alpha Flight story or whatever anybody likes in Alpha Flight story. It’s like, “Here we are in snowy wasteland.” And that’s not all Canada is.

Justin: There’re beaches.

Alex: There’s beaches. So they clearly were like, “No, we’re got to set a story at a beach. We’re going to show off part of Canada.”

Justin: We get to see Fat Cobra from Iron Fist fame in here. And the last story I thought was just truly a horror story, a comic book horror story without any go or anything, just an emotional horror story. It was great.

Alex: If you have never read Alpha Flight and you always kind of pushed to the side as Ed and other team, read the first 12 issues by John Byrne, which are phenomenal, and ended one of the most heartbreaking twists I’ve ever read comics. They’re great.

Alex: Moving on to DC Comics Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy], number one, just picking up right after Heroes in Crisis. Poison Ivy died. She came back to life. She’s not quite right. And now Harley and Ivy are on the road to try to figure her stuff out. I thought this was fun Lark. What do you guys think about this book?

Justin: Yeah, fun, first issue. I love these two together. It’s great to see them together without having to deal with a bunch of Batman stuff. Them alone, it’s fun.

Alex: Yeah. And it ties into a little thing that they kind of threw it in the Swamp Thing continuity. I believe in the Justice League Dark Annual, which I thought was very neat and surprising, but made a lot of sense in terms of the villain for the series. Pete, what do you think about this?

Pete: Yeah. I think it’s fun having them team up and be in their own little world. And it’s fun to see Harley care about people. I think sometimes when Harley is drawn or written, she’s crazy or she’s always attached to the Joker. There’s always something with Joker. So it’s nice to see her have her own wants and needs and still be Harley and try to care for her friend which is very sweet.

Pete: But then we kind of get a new villain reveal and kind of Poison Ivy keeps kind of curling up into a ball.

Alex: As you do.

Pete: Yeah.

Alex: When you come back from death, you curl up into the ball a little bit.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: [crosstalk 00:39:43].

Alex: Yeah. I enjoyed this. Are your fans of the character, definitely check that out. Moving on to a super advanced review coming out September 25th from Valiant Comics.

Pete: No spoiler alerts.

Alex: Bloodshot, number one from Hack and Tim Seeley. Hack/Slash, Tim Seeley, Pete, as a resident violence fan, curious to hear what you thought about this.

Justin: That would have been hard to get, because it’s a different word.

Pete: Yep. But-

Alex: Wait. Were you saying Gorey S?

Pete: Yeah. I didn’t want to say it like that.

Alex: It’s always good when you’re making upon to not actually say.

Pete: Exactly. [crosstalk 00:40:25].

Alex: Keep it real [crosstalk 00:40:26].

Justin: It’s the jokes you don’t say that people laugh the hardest.

Pete: Yeah. Exactly. I believe that.

Alex: That’s what I learned in Vaudeville.

Pete: But yeah, I think Tim Seeley does such a great job of writing action, moving things forward in a way that is fun to follow. And yeah, this is really cool. It’s nice to see him have fun with Bloodsport.

Justin: Wow.

Pete: Bloodshot.

Justin: Bloodshot.

Alex: What about Justin and get his opinions on this?

Justin: Great choice.

Alex: Pete, by the way, is slowly sinking down to his chair. I think, was it not going to upset about Wolverine died in the sun that made you curl into a ball?

Pete: Yeah. Exactly.

Alex: Okay.

Justin: Great.

Pete: So I was doing like a Van Damme, Bloodsport.

Alex: That was also-

Justin: You’re not making any sense.

Pete: I think have killed it.

Justin: Maybe, you should send out a lexicon.

Alex: That killing or be killed.

Justin: Yeah. That’s it. Being killed. This is fun. But we talked on a couple shows ago with some Valiant folks who were talking about Bloodshots and how Bloodshots fun again. And this very much feels that way. Bloodshots out there has a very Deadpool vibe to him. He’s indestructible.

Pete: It’s not too annoying. Do you know this feels like the ’90s action movie, Bloodshot?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Super fun. What Jeff, I believe it was Jeff Lemire who is writing bloodshot for a good long while. Very interesting, very introspective, super dark. Take on the character, lots of time travel and move into the future and the little dark realms of hell and other things like that.

Alex: But this is basically like, “Nah, man, he’s gotten that Ninites. He could be whoever he wants. Let’s blow shit up.”

Justin: And it is like an image book from the ’90s, a comic book.

Alex: Absolutely. Super fun. And Tim Seeley is exactly the right person to be writing something like that.

Pete: He’s a fun guy.

Alex: It’s great. I had a blast reading this. And I’m very excited to read the next one. Particularly paired with Killers, one Valiant’s other books, which is also just Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter but in the Valiant Universe. This is a fun spate of books.

Justin: And it also has some stakes to the villains like what happens when God hates the earth, or hates humans, basically? That’s a cool sort of underlying base and I think [crosstalk 00:42:47].

Alex: Yeah. I’m sure we’ll get deeper as it goes on. But as a first issue, it’s literally explosive and I enjoyed it. Let’s move on to Legion of Super-Heroes Millennium, number one from DC Comics is the first part of a two issue, what do we call it? Not a maxi series but large format and I don’t know. Something like that.

Justin: A large mini series?

Alex: Prestige. Prestige mini series.

Justin: Okay. Setting the stage for the-

Alex: Now, as you’d expect from a Legion of Super-Heroes mini series this focuses entirely on the character Rose and Thorn. That’s it.

Justin: Yeah. That’s all we need to say.

Alex: That’s it. I don’t know what this is yet. I liked the art in it.

Pete: The art is great.

Alex: There’s a bunch of different artists. It’s exploring different areas of the Legion of Super-Heroes in different parts of the DC future. Like we’ve been talking about with Brian Michael Bendis, just a lot of what he’s done with DC so far is, I don’t know if the phrases exactly, so his oats are flexing his muscles. One of the two.

Justin: I think he’s been shooting a bunch of fireworks in the air at the time. I think that makes sense.

Alex: He’s definitely like, “I want to play with all the things. I want to play with all the toys.” So that’s what he’s doing.

Justin: And this very much feels like he went into the DC basement and filled a box with stuff and he came out and this issue was like, “I’m going to put these five objects on the table, make of them what you will, and I’m going to tell you in the next issue, and then in the eventual Legion of Super-Heroes series, what I’m doing.” And that’s cool. I think that’s a good way to go about it.

Justin: Bendis seems like a good writer to deal with the many voices of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I love the Legion, especially Legionnaires run from back in the ’90s, which we talk about a lot. So I’m down with this. It was nice to see a Legion book start with the full context of the DC future. I feel like most Legion relaunches, they just jump to the future, and we see what’s happening. A Superman family character goes to the future and they move from there. This is walking us through it. And he gave it so much more context, which I thought was cool.

Alex: I agree with you on that. I think it’s going to read very well when you read both of the issues. As a fan of Legion of Super-Heroes as well, reading this issue, when it started off with the idea of Rose and Thorn, she’s a little bit in the future. What we find out in this issue is, she’s essentially a mortal. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know exactly what’s going on.

Alex: So we had that set up and I was like, “Okay, he’s throwing Rose a Thorn. We know he likes her because she’s this little character in the DC universe that he can revitalize, he can have his own take on, he threw her into the Superman run. Okay, we told the first part of the story, here comes the Legion of Super-Heroes.”

Alex: And I sat back and then he gets to the second part is like, “Okay, we’re still focusing on Rose and Thorn. Okay, I get it. We’re building up to the Legion of Super-Heroes, here we go.” And we went through like five parts of that. By the end of their show is like, “We still have are the Legion of Super-Heroes. What are we getting to Legion of Super-Heroes? That’s the title of the book.”

Alex: So again, I understand, intellectually, what you’re saying that we are going to be building to that, and we’re getting there.

Justin: It’s nice to see you get upset about something that you know, intellectually, you shouldn’t be getting upset about.

Alex: Yeah. [inaudible 00:45:46] Legion of Super-Heroes.

Justin: Yeah. Great.

Pete: You guys are really two sides of the same coin.

Alex: Well, which one’s head? Which one’s tails?

Pete: Oddly, you’re both tails. It’s one of those fucked up coins.

Alex: Let’s watch Marvel comic book, Web of Black Widow, number one. This is a much darker take on Black Widow than we’ve seen usually in the comics. What do you guys think about this?

Pete: Well, it’s cool because every once awhile we get to deal with her as a kid or hear stories about her training and all that kind of stuff.

Justin: You get to deal with that a lot, if you’re reading Black Widow comics.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: So much of those comments are like, “You think her life it’s nice now, look at this shit. She had to do ballet and then kill people.”

Justin: Yeah. I know, but I want to make a little Black Widow of my own.

Pete: Oh, that’s adorable. I wish you luck with that.

Justin: You want to come to the red room? Come to the red room.

Pete: Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes from here. It just kind of has a fucked up start, which is fine. But yeah, Black Widow has great characters, a lot of possibilities.

Justin: The art in this book is great, really fantastic. And I like that it sort of has the artistic style of a Black Widow standalone series sort of set to the side of the Marvel Universe, but this takes place fully in the Marvel Universe. It’d be good to see Iron Man in this and Tony Stark. It’s nice great character choice there. They have a relationship both as co-workers, on the Avengers and also into personally, very fun. They quickly deal with the fact that she’s been recently resurrected. Fine.

Pete: Yeah, just quickly. Yeah. I’ve been resurrected a couple times in our field.

Justin: That’s fine. They set the premise in a nice way, just trying to go back and fix all the bad stuff that she’s done before. I thought this is a good first issue.

Alex: All right. Last one talk about from Image Comic books Battlepug, number one. The enormous pug and his warrior is back. This is super fun. I really enjoyed this a lot.

Pete: I knew you would.

Justin: Yeah?

Alex: Yeah. You did.

Pete: Yeah. He loves this shit.

Justin: He loves to pets.

Alex: I do love pets.

Justin: Yeah. You love cute-

Alex: Well, Battlepug is fun. Did you guys read the other Battlepug stuff?

Justin: Yes.

Alex: Well, that’s definitely a yes.

Pete: Not not a yes.

Justin: That’s a no.

Alex: Battlepug, this is very violent. It’s a big dog. You like that stuff as well.

Pete: No. This is great.

Justin: It’s fun irreverent till topical. There’s some references to what I think is a political figure.

Alex: Oh, you like topical. Yes. Wait, which one? Santa Claus?

Justin: Is it Justin Trudeau from Canada?

Alex: No, I think it’s Santa Claus.

Justin: Oh, that’s it.

Alex: Very controversial.

Justin: This is a funny book because it starts like it could just be sort of a fun take in this world of Battlepug, and it’s like, “Oh, no, we’re going to comment.” It’s almost like Mad Magazine by the end, where it’s the war on Christmas, Donald Trump is the bad guy. There’s a Vladimir Putin turns into a bear when he gets his hands cut off.

Alex: Yeah. I think Mad Magazine is a very good touchstone for it. It definitely feels like it’s not quite as satirical as grew, even or anything like that. But it’s definitely going for that bent. It’s funny. It’s fun. It’s silly, but it’s sort of having actual fantasy story.

Pete: And then you get John Pugs. So everybody [inaudible 00:49:11].

Alex: John Pugs, everybody loves a big pug.

Justin: Yeah. I live with pugs.

Alex: Do you?

Justin: Downstairs, at my house.

Pete: Yeah. That’s true.

Alex: Do they battle?

Justin: Yeah. I’m training them to fight each other. I do a lot of training of different people in my life.

Pete: That’s great man. Good for you.

Alex: That’s really cool.

Justin: Pug view pug.

Pete: Dude, if you have that in your backyard, or whatever, I’d love to come over and place bets.

Justin: Oh, you want to do some dog fighting?

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: What a weird way to say that.

Pete: A dog versus his daughter. Oh, I haven’t thought about that. Yeah, I was just-

Justin: Definitely, think about it a dog and my daughter fighting.

Alex: [crosstalk 00:49:44] definitely think about it as much as possible. Pete you’re starting to slow your words. So we’re going to finish up this episode patreon.com/comicbookclub, if you want to support the show. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 8:00pm.

Alex: You’re at The PIT loft Theater in New York. Come on by quickly because I don’t know if Pete’s going to survive till the next one. Where do you want to plug?

Pete: Friends on Facebook so you get to know about the amazing guests we have on our live show.

Justin: Post on Twitter and sorry we poisoned Pete.

Alex: We’re on Twitter.

Justin: No. Just follow us on Twitter, @comicbookclublotcomicbooklive.

Alex: Great. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast. For more you could subscribe at iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice and we’ll see you at the old timey Vaudeville show. Come on, down. Come on down at a Saturday out there and eat some pies.